Transcript:
The being of Caravan manifests itself in the absolute desert, perhaps because over 1000s of years, the absolute desert is a place the mystics go, both inwardly and outwardly, because the absolute desert is a place of emptiness and stillness.
So one can be in the conversation of the deep self, the ground of being, you'd say, that place which precedes the no thing that precedes all things. The place of ultimate stillness. The absolute desert is the quintessential metaphor for the ground of being. It has often been called the ocean of sand, it's a kind of ocean, speaking of oceans.
So it's not about is there water or not. It's about the absolute desert is this place of ultimate contemplation, of great space given for this conversation of the deep question of life. What's the ultimate question of meaning in one's life? And how are we meant to bring that to this world.
It's a great counterpoint, syncopation, if you will, between the abundance of flora and life in this world, and the great space and stillness and grounded being of the ultimate desert, the ocean of sand.
So that first place of contemplation when you arrive in Caravan is, in the one direction, this endless stream of people in the conversation about their life mission and the other direction, you have this endless, empty horizon in which your thoughts can spread out across the landscape to that fine point where the horizon meets the sky and, you know, is set in the book to be a place that it's barely distinguishable.
There's nothing on the landscape to bounce back to your thoughts, so that you drop into that place of stillness. So the purpose of the ultimate desert is that great expanse of stillness for your mind so you can go deeply into the conversation.
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